One Short Day
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day 1457a: The day has come for Chloe Clarke to travel from her home in Indiana to her idol Rachel Berry's house in New York, where she'll spend the summer. - Red series extra - ANNIVERSARY CYCLE - day 8, shift A


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 69th cycle. Now cycle 70!_

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**_GLEEKATHON FOURTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE -_**_ It's October again, which means another year of Gleekathon is about to wrap up! At the end of the month it will have been four years since I've started doing my daily stories! As always, I will be celebrating this with a special cycle of stories to touch on my favorite stories I've done throughout the year. There will be two installments each on Thursdays, Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays. The remaining days will feature, as they have in the last several months, new chapters of the latest story in my Doctor Who/Glee crossover series. As far as the anniversary stories go, it will be as I've done before, taking those past stories and either doing a prequel, sequel, POV swap, genre swap, alternate ending, or additional scenes._

**_This_**_ **story** is a PREQUEL to "Pinch Me" a Red series story originally posted on January 26 2013.  
_

_(This is a shift day, which means there will be two stories posted today!)_

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**"One Short Day"  
Chloe (OC), (Older) Rachel, Sophie (OC)  
Red series extra  
_(no listing yet for this series)_  
**

Her stepfather claimed he could get them from Greenwood to New York in ten hours, but Chloe had long known to widen her expectations, just in case. It didn't matter though, not today: They were taking her to Rachel Berry's house, where she would live with her for the whole summer… Her, Chloe Clarke of Greenwood, Indiana, living with her idol, Rachel Berry... She was still waiting to wake up and find it wasn't real.

She had double checked, triple checked all her bags the night before, and she was on the verge of starting a fourth run when her mother had convinced her she was ready and helped get everything down near the door for the next morning. She had to get to bed early enough, if they were going to be up by 4:30am and out the door ninety minutes later. She wasn't worried about this part so much. With how long they'd be on the road, catching up on her sleep in the back seat didn't seem like such a bad idea. It would make it all go faster.

She had fallen so soundly asleep that when she woke, on her own, she found it was 4:25 and she was perfectly rested. Trying not to look so disappointed about it, she'd jumped in the shower to start getting ready. They would be in the car by 5:58am, where Chloe got in the back, put on her headphones, pulled out her notebook and pen, and continued carving down her song list. She knew she would have to perform at some point at the start of the workshop, and she wanted the perfect song. She knew which songs she could do in her sleep, but she didn't want to rely on that alone: she knew anyone could choke on a 'sure thing,' and that wasn't going to be her.

Two hours into the trip, she'd looked up briefly and spotted her mother smirking to herself in the passenger seat. Pulling out one ear bud, Chloe paused her music. "What?"

"You were singing," her mother told her.

"Oh… Was I too loud?" she asked.

"Not at all," Mrs. Clarke promised her daughter, looking over her shoulder. "It was beautiful, as always."

"How beautiful?" Chloe inquired, sitting up. "Workshop worthy or not? If you had to rate it out of ten, one being mass audience exodus, ten being a twenty minute 'standing O…'"

"Ten," her mother told her, and Chloe frowned.

"That's what you always say."

"Eight and a half," her stepfather pitched in, and Chloe smiled.

"Thank you," she told him before resuming her track elimination.

She'd reduced the list to three songs by the time they had stopped for lunch, which was just as well, because when she got too hungry her mind wandered, and if her mind wandered now, she just might end up adding ten new songs or going back on a handful of her eliminations.

They were getting so close now, and all three of them were showing signs that the imminent separation was weighing on them. The reasons varied from one to the other. For her parents, it was all about knowing that only months ago she had run away to the very place they were taking her now and trying not to get it in their heads that once they brought her to New York she would either never return to Greenwood, or she would disappear altogether. She had promised them that wouldn't happen, and they trusted her, but she had long robbed them of complete certainty. For her, it was about going that far, by the kindness of her idol, and ending up disappointing her, disappointing her parents… disappointing herself. She had all this drive in her, but then this had been handed to her, and with her parents' concerns, it had made her wonder if she was finally reaching out of her depth, going too far.

No, she wasn't going to crash. They believed in her for a reason, for the same reason she'd known for years. She had talent, and she had passion. This was what she was meant to do, and when Rachel Berry had recognized it, she had been validated. She could do this. New York had called her up.

Back in the car, she let her mind clear, focusing only on her trio of finalist songs. She wasn't even aware she was falling asleep. When she woke up again, with a start and with a choice made, two hours had passed. She sat herself back up, wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth, cranked down the window for a bit of air, and she belted out her final choice to the wind and the road. She finished to the sound of her mother's proud weeping and her stepfather vowing she'd knocked out a ten and a half. She would still spend the next little while working out the kinks.

The one thing that got her to stop was her stepfather announcing they were entering New York City. She could see why her parents were concerned about taking her back here. This place felt like home in a whole other way than Greenwood did. Greenwood was where she'd been born, where she'd grown up, but New York had been calling to her since she was little, and being here was answering that call. It made sense for her to be here, and as much as her parents said they understood it, she knew they didn't, not completely.

Rachel Berry understood it, and now they were pulling up in front of her house. The day they'd been given the address, she felt like she was holding a magical code. She couldn't tear her eyes away. This was it, this was where she lived. She would be inside that house now, waiting for her to arrive. Her idol had thought her worthy of living there in her house for months. She wasn't going to let her down, not now, not ever. She reached for the handle, and she opened the car door.

THE END

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******A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
****In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
************always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!**


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